The emergence of instant capacity-on-demand (iCOD) high-end computers has provided corporations, enterprises, and other users with great flexibility in paying for and purchasing high-end multiprocessor computers. A customer can purchase a high-end iCOD computer or server with multiple central processing units (CPUs) yet pay a reduced price by activating only some of the CPUs. The remaining CPUs remain inactive and are not licensed for use until the inactive CPUs are activated. In this way, the customer can save money by initially paying a system vendor for only the CPUs that are required at the time of purchase, while retaining the ability to instantly activate CPUs in the future. The customer merely needs to activate additional CPUs with system administration commands and to pay additional licensing fees for activating the additional CPUs. The iCOD computer customer can effectively add CPUs to the iCOD system without needing to purchase or install any additional CPUs.
The iCOD computer or server measures the total number of CPUs that are currently on the iCOD computer and the number of CPUs that are currently inactive and periodically reports these measurements back to the system vendor. The system vendor then determines if there are any unlicensed CPUs, where the customer has activated iCOD CPUs without paying, and notifies the customer that payment is required. The iCOD CPU may be priced at market rate at the time of activation, and the iCOD customer is able to easily activate capacity and then pay for the iCOD CPU.
This model of iCOD CPU activation followed by payment creates administrative problems for many customers, especially larger and more bureaucratic organizations. The person who activates additional iCOD CPUs is typically either a low-level system operator or a system administrator who may work for a different organization than that of the persons or departments that oversee the budgets. The system administrator may also work for a different group than system planners authorized to make decisions on the computer configuration. The system administrator or operator may not even be employed by the same corporation as that of the system architecture, planning, or purchasing departments, because the system administration may have been outsourced. This disconnect between the persons activating additional iCOD CPUs and the persons overseeing or paying for the additional iCOD CPUs frequently results in system administrators activating iCOD CPUs—and effectively making a substantial purchase under the iCOD agreement—without first seeking approval from the customer's budgetary, system architecture or other designated authorizing parties. These authorizing parties, moreover, are not notified of this purchase until a bill or payment reminder issues from the system vendor, which usually occurs well after the system capacity was increased and put into use.
Vendors, such as Hewlett Packard, currently request that customers designate a “system contact” to be notified of any system changes, such as the activation of additional iCOD CPUs, so that someone in the customer's organization is informed of such changes. Even this solution, however, is far from foolproof because the system contact given to the vendor may in fact be the system administrator or operator, particularly if only one system contact is required. Moreover, merely notifying the system contact after activation still may prove problematic even if the correct person is notified because the system administrator could still activate an iCOD CPU and effectively make a substantial purchase without prior authorization.